


Branching Fork

by DevineMandate



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Post-Lethal White
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevineMandate/pseuds/DevineMandate
Summary: An alternate ending to“Foot in the Door”, which you should read first if you haven't read it yet.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Kudos: 33





	Branching Fork

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Foot in the Door](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21503977) by [DevineMandate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevineMandate/pseuds/DevineMandate). 



*THIS STORY IS AN ALTERNATE FINAL CHAPTER TO [“FOOT IN THE DOOR”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21503977/chapters/51253291), ANOTHER STORY I WROTE HERE, BUT I DON’T WANT TO PUT THIS PIECE IN THAT STORY. YOU SHOULD READ THAT FIRST IF YOU WANT TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS STORY*

Robin arrived at work before dawn the next morning to get the photos from the office before heading to the stakeout. She came quietly through the door (with Strike presumably asleep upstairs), then saw the door to Strike’s office was open and his office lit, quiet stirrings coming from within. Robin raised her eyebrow--Strike wasn't usually up at this hour except if work called for it.

She prepared herself a mug of tea using the last of their current supply, and then walked toward Strike’s office to say a quick good morning before she headed out.

Robin rounded the corner of the doorway, and looked in.

Strike was standing there behind his desk at the window, but facing mostly away from her, seemingly just staring out the window. In one hand, he held a tattered, purple, bangled headband. He was fiddling with it absently, moving it around his wrist occasionally as he continued to look out at dark, silent London.

Robin, unsure of his mood and the situation, watched him a moment longer trying to gauge either of these things, but his posture and movements did not change, and she began to feel she was taking advantage despite learning nothing, so she announced herself quietly.

“Cormoran?”

Strike jumped, turned around. For just a moment, despite his size, he appeared to be a frightened child, his eyes flared open with pupils dilated, his mouth a round “o” of shock, his brows raised, and Robin’s heart almost broke as his face rearranged itself into the standard surly Strike expression that most of the world saw. But Robin, who knew him better than the world did, could see something was still wrong.

“I’m sorry, Cormoran, I didn’t mean to scare you. What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

Strike sat down and put the headband on his desk. He looked into his lap a moment, and then up at Robin.

“Charlotte came here last night. She walked in at the end of business hours right after you and I spoke on the phone.”

Robin’s heart stuttered and jerked in her chest. “Oh.” She was sure she didn’t want the answer, but she had to ask. “What happened?” She prepared herself for the worst, readying herself for the blow as best she could.

“She thanked you for saving her and setting her free, and she said she would leave my life forever. Then she left the office.”

Robin waited, knowing from his tone that this wasn’t the end of the story.

He let out a huff of air, and said, “I yelled down the stairs for her to come back, and she did.”

Robin’s heart was twisting around itself.

“I kissed her, Robin.”

There it was. And it hurt more than she could have ever believed it would.

He went on, “We were going upstairs, and…”

“Cormoran, stop, please. This is your business, I shouldn’t hear this.” If he went into details of the euphoria of their reunion or their kissing or anything that had happened in his flat last night, she didn’t think she could go on being in this place with him. She’d flee, as though from a monster.

“Wait, let me finish,” he said, looking desperate as he leaned toward her over his desk.

She steeled herself again to take more unbearable punishment, put the tea she was still holding on a shelf near the door of his office, nodded.

He looked at her intensely. "We were going upstairs and she said something." He paused, leaned even further towards her. "She said, 'I knew you'd pick me. Kissing her would be like kissing your sister or your mother, wouldn't it? You need someone sharp and hard to be with because you're so soft-hearted, aren't you, Bluey?'"

Robin could not breathe, uncertain of everything, felt how the edifices and ground rules of their relationship were being shaken and violated, used what air was left in her lungs to whisper: "What did you do?"

"I didn't say anything for a minute, and then I told her to leave and never come back."

Adrenaline coursed through her, she almost vibrated on the spot as she tried not to move, wanting to let him finish.

"Because she's wrong, Robin. That's not what I need."

Robin felt like she was going to burst. She took one step toward his desk.

Suddenly his gaze dropped to the headband he’d set in front of him.

“Robin, this is my mother’s headband,” he said, pushing Robin away from one figurative cliff edge and toward another.

She stopped moving toward him, and looked at the headband. It was old, ancient in terms of the type of object it was.

“It’s the only thing I have of hers anymore.”

Robin thought her heart might actually fly out of her chest and toward him, it yearned so much to comfort him.

“All of her things were taken by the police after she was killed. It was a crime scene and everything she had was there.” He said the next part as though it were an apology. “When it was still illegal to do so, Charlotte marched into the place where my mum had been living, in the dead of night, looking like the queen of Sheba, like she had every right to be there, I’m sure, though I wasn’t there, and I don’t know where she found it, but that night, she gave me the only tangible reminder of my mother that I have besides Lucy.”

Robin’s eyes filled with tears.

He was practically pleading with her now. “Robin, I’m sorry, she meant so much to me for so long, Charlotte did. She was there when my mother died, she came back to me and helped me after I got blown up, she was in my blood for sixteen years. She, she…”

And without warning, his face crumpled, and he put his arms on the desk and lowered his head into them and began sobbing. Enormous, braying, ugly sobs that matched his size and the epic nature of his grief.

Robin hurried behind his desk and draped herself over him in the most comforting way she could, her arms across his back, her head resting on his hair, which was somehow bristly and soft at the same time. He raised one arm awkwardly behind him and stroked her hair even as he continued crying into his other arm.

After a minute or two, his sobs slowed down and finally stopped. Robin rose off of him, and he raised his head and wiped his nose on one sleeve and his eyes on the other. “Sorry,” he said, turning his head to look up at her, and Robin’s heart twinged again.

“Don’t say you’re sorry, please don’t, Cormoran. It means so much to me that you would tell me this, and be so open about yourself, and let me be there for you. Don’t say you’re sorry, please.”

He smiled a little as he wiped his eyes again. “You remind me of her so much sometimes. You both care about people so much, so honestly, even when you don’t know them. You don’t want credit or regard; you just want to help people.”

Now it was Robin who burst into tears without warning, and Strike rose out of his chair and held her as she wept into his neck and shoulder for a few moments. She spoke, her voice thick with tears and muffled by his shoulder: “It doesn’t seem right that I’m crying right now. I can’t even imagine how you feel, and I’m the one getting comfort from you.”

“But you _can_ imagine how I feel, Robin. You feel other people’s pain like it was yours; it’s one of the things I love about you so much.”

Robin stiffened and dried her eyes on his shoulder and raised her head, her lip trembling, her breath hitching. “You love...things about me?”

He looked down at her, his shimmering eyes meeting her own, and he smiled. “So many things.” And he lowered his head and kissed her.

It felt to Robin as though dawn had broken in her head, like light was filling everything inside her and threatening to vaporise her. She kissed back delicately, love and tenderness overwhelming her senses. It felt as though she were sending the light that filled her body into him, saving herself from overload by sharing this incredible energy with him, two conduits overflowing.

They pulled back from one another, and looked at each other, incredibly happy.

Then Robin started. “Oh God, Cormoran, I have to go to the stakeout.”

Strike’s expression went neutral and stayed that way for a moment, and then he began laughing uproariously, and held her close, and after a moment, the situation and the rumble of his laugh tickled her, and she laughed too. They laughed and laughed and laughed until they were breathless and almost sick with it.

Then he released her, his grin stretching from ear to ear. “Yes, Robin, by all means, go to the stakeout.” Then his expression turned completely serious: “But promise you’ll come back tonight. Promise.”

She smiled and said, “Promise.”

“Would you like to go to dinner? I’ll make a reservation somewhere, and let you know. If you want to, of course.” He still seemed cautious, as though he couldn’t believe what was happening and might make a wrong move on this new ground and fall into a quagmire.

“I want to. Oh, I want to!”

“Okay!” He smiled. “Get going, and can’t wait to see you again. I’ll let you know.”

But she couldn’t leave just yet. She closed the short distance between them quickly, and crushed herself against him, and brought his head down to hers, and opened her mouth so he could come in, and he did, and oh, but it was beautiful. The sweep of his tongue against hers, his breath in her mouth, the electricity racing through her at every small, tender movement, every delicate touch of his hands on her back and shoulders and waist.

Then she broke away and said, “More later, promise, but I really have to go.” She walked out of the office, but turned around one more time to look back through the doorway again. “I’m so happy, Cormoran.”

“Me too, Robin. Can’t wait. So much to talk about. So much to...do.” And now his smile had hunger in it, and he passed his gaze quickly from her head to her toes and back, and she blushed and smiled again and hurried off.

She pulled out her phone on the way down the stairs, and called her flatmate, who would be getting ready for work about now. “Hi, it’s me,” she said. “Can I ask you for a really big favor? In the closet on one end, you’ll see a green dress that’s much nicer than anything else I own, with a tear at the zip. Will you please take it to a shop called Vashti and ask what can be done about repairing it quickly? Don’t tell them this up front, but I’ll pay anything they want if they can get it done today.” She listened. “You can? Thank you so much! It’s so important to me, I’ve been waiting almost three years to wear that dress to a special event…”


End file.
